The Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM), an outcome of the G8 and G20 discussions on food security and agricultural growth, is a four year multi-donor partnership between the European Commission (EC), the French Development Agency (AFD), the Italian Development Cooperation (DGCS), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), NEPAD and the development partners.

Background

For the past years, many international institutions and organizations have placed considerable importance on Agricultural Risk Management (ARM). However, bottlenecks in terms of lack of capacity, insufficient knowledge transfer between countries, and low uptake of innovation persist in the area of agricultural risk management. Several local, regional and international development institutions and stakeholders have expressed the need for a supportive facility that fosters the exchange of knowledge and experience to assist the public and the private sector in developing countries to build a more structured knowledge-based approach towards agricultural risk management.

The discussions at the G8 and G20 Summits of 2010, 2011 and 2012 created a positive momentum around the questions of food security and agricultural risk management. It led to the decision to establish a Platform on Agricultural Risk Management (PARM), which was explicitly mentioned in the G8 and G20 communiqués. By December 2013, PARM was set up and mandated to support the development of holistic approaches to agricultural risk management and to facilitate knowledge exchange in the field.

Goal and Objectives

General

The overall objective of PARM is to contribute to sustainable agricultural growth, reduce food insecurity, and improve livelihoods of rural and poor farming households in developing countries.

Specific

The specific objective of PARM is to strengthen agricultural risk management (ARM) in developing countries, in a holistic manner and on a demand-driven basis by supporting partner countries in making ARM institutional component of agricultural policy.

ARM becomes an institutional component of agricultural policy in beneficiary Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) and interested Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and African Union (AU).